Jonah(@jonah_b):The internet’s business model was built around attention: free content in exchange for ads. That worked because humans were doing the browsing, and humans can be marketed to. But agents don’t look at ads. As agents start acting on our behalf, the economics of the open web start to break. Why publish for free if your audience is mostly bots? One answer is micropayments. An agent fetching one article or hitting an API once shouldn't have to subscribe at $10 a month. The natural unit of pricing is a fraction of a cent per request. Another path is that advertising mutates. Websites can slip sponsored information directly into their content to influence the agents.

2026.05.18 18:00

The internet’s business model was built around attention: free content in exchange for ads. That worked because humans were doing the browsing, and humans can be marketed to. But agents don’t look at ads. As agents start acting on our behalf, the economics of the open web start to break. Why publish for free if your audience is mostly bots? One answer is micropayments. An agent fetching one article or hitting an API once shouldn't have to subscribe at $10 a month. The natural unit of pricing is a fraction of a cent per request. Another path is that advertising mutates. Websites can slip sponsored information directly into their content to influence the agents.